A struggling nation awaits new help

The office block housing the minister of social affairs in Kinshasa is mostly empty and last month's historic elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are unlikely to change that soon. "Part of the roof fell in long ago on our documentation centre," Likoyi Loleko, assistant to the director of cabinet to the minister, said. "We have no photocopier, only one functioning computer in the whole building and we haven't been paid in months." Homeless people have moved in next door to his office. This scenario of dilapidated government buildings lacking basic equipment and late salaries is symptomatic of the DRC's economic malaise. Despite the country's vast mineral wealth, the outgoing transitional government has collected few taxes, and receives more than half its budget from international donors. Since the presidential election, Belgium has given 25 million euros (about US $32 million) towards public sanitation efforts in Kinshasa, Lubumbashi and Mbuji-Mayi. However, donor officials in Kinshasa have expressed concern that the money may not be spent wisely. With corruption endemic, the World Bank decided in March to hold off approving more funds for the DRC, and the country's leading bilateral donor, the European Union, has not yet put any cash towards the government budget. "There is no state, for the time being, in this country," one European diplomat in Kinshasa, who did not wish to be identified, said recently. "We don't think their procedures are reliable at all." The diplomat said the EU was handling $800 million for the Congo but none of it went directly to the budget. The money, the diplomat said, was being channelled through development projects. For United Nations humanitarian coordinator Ross Mountain, urgently needed aid cannot wait for a government to be up and running. "You cannot build a country with dead bodies," he said. More than 1,200 people die every day in the DRC, he said, the victims of conflict, rape, looting, poverty and a near-total breakdown of basic infrastructure. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has a $675-million action plan for UN agencies and NGOs to deliver food, health services and other emergency services, of which 30 percent has so far been funded. Of the EU's $800 million, $40 million is designated for emergency aid. Priorities How the international community helps to create the institutions of government is the subject of ongoing discussions among donors. "The modalities are still being worked out," Mountain said. The World Bank held two informal meetings on governance issues in May and June in Washington and Brussels, according to Jean-Michel Happi, the World Bank representative in the DRC. He said the meetings were called jointly by the World Bank and EU and included representatives from all the major development partners in DRC. He added that the meetings were technical and analytical. "In a country where everything is urgent we needed analytical and technical meetings to work out the sequencing," he said in Kinshasa. Happi said participants at the meeting agreed that the government's first priority was security, which includes creating an effective army, police and judiciary. The next priority is financial management, which includes improving tax collection and expenditure procedures. Then there is natural resource management, civil-service reform, and finally mechanisms for transparency. "With these elements in place the government will be able to start delivering social services," he said. Provision of social services and application of economic reform could have a greater chance of success if the government devolved power to various local governments. The new constitution calls for just this kind of decentralisation but Bernard Piette, the EU's first councillor in the DRC, said creating institutions at the provincial and local levels should come later. "You cannot decentralise until you have a centre," he said. The new government will continue to struggle to provide services from Kinshasa as much of the country is difficult to reach. It is very difficult - if not impossible - to travel by car from one side of the country to the other. Therefore, Piette said, road-building was one sector that donors could start on before the incoming government is installed. "We can hire construction companies without having to give any money to the government directly," he said. [Countdown in Congo] dh/mw/oss